Those lost Mass. General patient records include HIV status

By adamg on Thu, 03/26/2009 - 2:35pm

Bay Windows has the scoop and talks to one of the 40 or 50 patients whose records were lost on the Red Line.

Topics:

The T

Free tagging:

Red Line

MGH

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Comments

Unexpected from MGH

By neilv on Thu, 03/26/2009 - 3:44pm.

Gah. That was my first thought when I heard the initial report: that the worst case would be that the missing documents indicated HIV+ status of individuals.

I know that the testing functions at MGH take pains to respect privacy of HIV results with pseudonymity and only giving results in person (even when you're not concerned at all, and are just getting tested as a matter of responsible practice), which makes this mistake all the more bitter.

Unbelievable

By SwirlyGrrl on Thu, 03/26/2009 - 5:38pm.

One of the jobs I had while at MGH involved working with the medical records of cancer patients and I wasn't even allowed to leave the suite with any records. I had to take courses in confidentiality where we were tested on the rules and had to sit through stories of how reporters will camp out and try to chat you up in case you know something about famous sick person's condition (usually illustrated with some tale about how some worker messed up and outed John Wayne's condition or something).

There used to be signs in every elevator, most restrooms, in the cafeteria, etc. warning workers to keep confidential information confidential. Somebody just brought stuff home with identifiers? OMFG, what was she thinking!

Questions someone might address

By neilv on Thu, 03/26/2009 - 9:32pm.

* Does a billing manager receive training in confidentiality comparable to that of the doctors, nurses, technicians, researchers, etc.?

* Do the documents with which a billing manager works include information like HIV status out of necessity? Could that be improved by different compartmentalization?

* What policies and procedures were observed and not? Where these P&Ps communicated? What are the common practices, as distinct from P&Ps?

I'm sure MGH is on top of investigating this, but other organizations and individuals could learn from MGH's experience.

holy crap

By david_yamada on Thu, 03/26/2009 - 6:34pm.

I feel terrible for those individuals whose privacy has been so completely compromised.

Unfortunately, the individual(s) responsible for this horrible bumble must be shown the door. Some lapses are inexcusable.